Absolutely. As a black woman I don’t describe myself as left, right, or center. I am an indigenous woman and my values are about country, water, and people. If that makes me a leftie then so be it. But that’s just another label that the colonizers give you.
As part of the uprising I was talking about, people are becoming more aware of what the Greens are about. Yes, we’re still a very white, privileged party — we want to decolonize the Greens too, which means making space for black people like me. We’ve got a new senator-elect from Western Australia, an Aboriginal woman. So, there’ll be two black women in the Senate.
This is part of the reason why the Greens are growing in numbers and popularity. Following the Victorian local government elections, the party now has thirty-six councilors. There’s one council [The City of Yarra], with a Greens majority.
Even so, there are still many people who don’t understand the Greens. They tend to see us as privileged, white leftists. But I would encourage those people to take a deeper look into we stand for. It’s very much the same as what indigenous people stand for.
With regards to the Greens-Labor coalition in the ACT, we can hold Labor to account and help to make Labor better. I’ve negotiated with Labor in the Victorian Parliament and now in the federal parliament — even if Labor says we can’t work together, we know we can. It happens on the ground, and we can continue to make a difference by holding them accountable to the people.
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